


Nor Antlers Through The Thickness Of His Curls

by hawkeward



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Religious Guilt, Self-Harm, Self-Hating Andrastian Adaar, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6816391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkeward/pseuds/hawkeward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adaar is twelve years old when he cuts off his horns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nor Antlers Through The Thickness Of His Curls

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Wilfred Owen's "Arms and the Boy," which I find a suitable poem for Vashoth parents hoping to raise their son outside the Qun. Too bad it doesn't work out.

Adaar is twelve years old when he cuts off his horns.

_Don’t be in too much of a hurry, imekari,_ his mother remarks fondly when she sees him fingering the growing tips at the breakfast table. _You’ll have your man’s horns soon enough._ His father says nothing, but tousles his hair with a large, work-worn hand as he leaves. They are proud. Their little boy is growing up.

He could pretend, when they were still the soft buds of childhood—there was little enough else to distinguish him from the village children, for all the thrown stones and jeers. Now they are coming in thick and ridged like his father’s, and will likely one day have his father’s length, as well. He used to dream that one day he would wake up a human—with horns, he can no longer ignore what he is.

He prays at the Chantry, long and hard. Is heresy bred into his bones and blood, those of a people so far from the Maker’s sight that His true children took up arms and marched against them? Will the Revered Mother reject him now, finally listen to the sisters’ grumbles and bar him from this one place he feels at peace? The thought is unbearable, but once had, it is near-constant—he avoids the Chantry for weeks, unable to suffer the torment of the faithful’s eyes.

He prays again when he takes up the saw— _Andraste, guide me._ The toothed blade bites into the tough material easily enough, though the angle is awkward. He tries several times before he finds a spot far enough from the base that he can bear the pain, but when the first bloodied horn drops to the ground he feels a rush of soaring elation. For a moment, he believes the Maker truly smiles on him.

His mother presses elfroot to the stumps, her mouth an unhappy line. He hears her crying, later. His father says nothing, but the set of his shoulders is that of shameful defeat.

The way the Revered Mother’s face softens when he returns to the Chantry makes it worthwhile.

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot that I wrote this, then found it eighteen months later in an old tumblr post. Whoops.


End file.
